05/08/2012

Good Free App of the Day: Goodnight Safari! (tap the baby animals!)

Today's Good Free App of the Day, Goodnight Safari, comes courtesy of our friends at Digital Storytime, who recently rated it as one of their Top 50 Free Bedtime Books. In this interactive ebook, children must tap on baby animals to help them complete a task!

I'm a sucker for baby animals, so I will definitely be "testing" this one with Lily tonight at bedtime. Someone posts baby animal videos to their Facebook feed and my productivity for the day is totally shot.

** Please note ** Only the app's developer can control when an app is free or not. All apps that we post as Good Free Apps of the Day are verified to be free at the time of this post. We make no guarantees otherwise. **

"Night is falling in the savanna ..." begins this short digital picture book. It features richly illustrated pages with a 'textured' appearance that softens the safari in a lovely way. Young readers get to help adorable wild animals prepare for the night on each page. Similar in style to Nighty, Night!, this seven page journey has the child tap on each baby animal to help them with a task. Help the giraffe reach leaves to eat, the rhino take a bath and the baby monkey swing into his mother's arms. Only the last page has a slight twist, tapping the sun instead to cause it to set.

The light interactivity and animation is very well done, enhancing the story without overstimulating a child before bed. Crisp sound effects accompany the animations and simple instructions/hints show where to tap to move the story along. After tapping the Zebra, he begins to leap through the grass until he reaches his mother, for instance, at which point the arrow for the next page appears. Most scenes take 2-3 taps to complete.

****

If you would like to download Goodnight Safari please support Smart Apps for Kids by using the links provided. Thanks for your support!

Every day we pick what we call the Good Free App of the Day, an app that we have downloaded, tested and certified: It can't have a ton of ads or just a little content with a ton of in-app purchases.

It also has to be good.

We then present them to you to read, download, and share so, based on which ones got the most hits, here are your Top 40 Favorite Free Apps. (We've eliminated apps that were only free for a limited period of time.)